The Gauhati High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Pallavi Sharma, an accused in the Assam Public Service Commission’s cash-for-job scam, to be with her MP father who has undergone kidney transplant a few days ago.
Ms. Sharma, daughter of Bharatiya Janata Party’s MP Ram Prasad Sharma, was one of 19 Assam civil service officers arrested in July for allegedly buying their jobs. Her father represents Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency.
Ms Sharma, under judicial custody now, was an Assam Police Service officer of the 2016 batch. “She was granted (bail) in view of her father’s health,” an officer investing the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) scam said.
Mr. Sharma was admitted in a Kolkata hospital last month where he underwent kidney transplant. His condition is said to be unstable. The APSC cash-for-job scam had unfolded in December 2016 after a junior engineer in Dibrugarh was caught for collecting, on behalf of former APSC chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul, ₹10 lakh from a doctor to ensure a civil service job. Mr Paul was arrested on November 4, 2016.
Several sets of answer sheets were recovered from the printing press of one of relatives later. These were found to have been ghost-written for the candidates allegedly pre-selected for cash.
Ms. Sharma was among 19 civil service officers summoned for a handwriting test. “They were arrested based on expert opinion on discrepancies in their answer scripts,” Gautam Bora, Dibrugarh Superintendent of Police, said.
More than 30 other Assam civil service officers had been arrested earlier. They too were called for a handwriting test. Their handwriting did not match with that in their answer sheets in the APSC examination held in 2016. Till date, 63 officers and APSC members and employees have been arrest in the cash-for-job scam. Among the officers dismissed from service is Rajarshi Sen Deka, son of former Congress minister Nilamani Sen Deka.
